Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer this summer raised the ire of those who resist revisions altering the original intent of the Founding Fathers when he said it was time for the court to rethink the constitutionality of the death penalty - a punishment accepted by the framers of the Constitution.
"My point is there are values in the Constitution. The values can stay the same. But the circumstances can change," Breyer says in an interview with
CBS News' Jan Crawford to be broadcast on
CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD, today, Sept. 13 (9:00 AM, ET) on the
CBS Television Network.
Breyer's colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia, called Breyer's position a bunch of "gobbledygook."
In a wide-ranging interview with Crawford, Breyer said "gobbledygook" was Scalia's opinion, and that he and his colleagues take Scalia's comments in stride.
"He suffers from a disease which is called "good writers' disease," Breyer tells Crawford. "When a person is a good writer, as he is, and when he finds a felicitous phrase he cannot give it up. It's like a good comedian. If you find a good joke and you're a comedian, you just can't give it up."
Breyer, 77, also talks with Crawford about his new book, his career, how the court works, past cases that drew controversy, his family and whether he thinks about retirement.
"I will eventually," Breyer says of retirement.
He also says that once on the job, jurists lose any political instincts they had going in.
"You get absorbed in this," Breyer says of the job. "You get absorbed. You take it very seriously. You can't let it up."
CBS SUNDAY MORNING is broadcast Sundays (9:00-10:30 AM, ET) on the
CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.
Follow
CBS SUNDAY MORNING on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and CBSNews.com. Listen to
CBS SUNDAY MORNING podcasts at Play.it.
Comments
To post a comment, you must
register and
login.
.png)
